Behind an affable exterior, BKT has a dexterous mind, a technocratic heart and nerves of steel. He knows that what he is doing is unusual. Yet he puts on the appearance of being genuinely surprised that his routine activities have created so much controversy that no less than the Prime Minister of the country had to come out openly in his support.
BKT is the executive chief of Kathmandu Valley Town Development Implementation Committee. Apart from monitoring compliance of building codes, his job is to clear areas in town that have been earmarked for roads. Once designated space has been cleared of all encroachments, different agencies would be responsible for shifting electricity poles, telephone wires, water supply lines, sewer pipes, and television and internet cables to make way for widening of roads.
Even after streets have been broadened a bit, BKT is professionally too astute not to know that traffic problems of Kathmandu Valley would remain largely unresolved. The width that he is helping add would do nothing to improve entry and exit points. There would be almost no extra space for service roads, bus-bays, taxi stands or slow vehicle lanes; since the distance to be cleared are uniform everywhere as measured from the centerline of the road. If all that sounds too much like mumbo jumbo, imagine being stuck in a public microbus with goats and gunnysacks in the passageway and the conductor blocking the door. No matter how comfortable the seat was, the passenger would still need to struggle his way out of the vehicle one at a time.
That could be the reason BKT doesn’t pretend that what he is doing would help reduce commuter’s woes. It would rather add to the problems of pedestrians. Drivers would be tempted to alternate between breaking at narrow sections and accelerating immediately to take advantage of widened stretches. Unpredictability of driver’s behavior is what makes crossing the road in Kathmandu a hazardous exercise.
The expectations of the town-planning chief are modest. He wants people to realize that they have a duty to respect laws that their own representatives have enacted. If lawmakers were to reduce the right-of-way of any road, BKT would probably be happy to cease his demolition drive. It is his second objective that makes his task ambitious. He says that he wants to open up ‘space’ along city roads. That sounds too much like angioplasty, to borrow a term from medical sciences, which aims to unblock, clear or repair a coronary artery.
In the words of Emile Zola, Haussmann had cut up Paris with an axe to build an “enormous hypocrisy.” BKT wields a bulldozer and his surgical procedure would be judged by his success or failure in creating spaces in a town desperately gasping for breath.
Open space
Open space is an arena of endless possibilities. It may refer to an empty space waiting for things to happen, tales to unfold and scenes to be enacted. In his canonical book, producer-director Peter Brook uses the title “The Empty Space” to formulate a philosophy of theater. The allegory is telling.
Theater presents life in understandable slices. The empty space is then a stage for conflicts, negotiations, inspiration, imagination, creativity, frustration, satisfaction and denouement. The cycle keeps repeating as life unfolds and opportunities of learning appear with unfailing regularity.
The phrase emptiness may also refer to blankness. If all the world is a stage, then where are the spectators for whom living beings play out their designated roles? The Bard left that question hanging. Possibilities are once again endless. It is quite likely that even outer space is not as empty as it is often perceived to be.
Vacant space is also open. It is merely waiting to be filled. A vacant parking slot is expecting the next vehicle. Meanwhile, a vacant plot is probably changing hands between land speculators. Someday someone would occupy it and then it would no longer remain vacant.
For a landscape architect, open space is a parcel of land without human-built structures. However, the site can always accommodate dreams of an architect who would like to have an artificial lake, a fake hillock or a stage for grand monuments.
When conservationists talk about open spaces, they refer to places reserved for specific purposes. These could be restricted, reserved or protected land where ‘development works’ is normally not allowed.
Greenbelts and greenways form a corridor and serve as recreational or reserve spaces. They are open areas that function as protective green covers and provide breathing space.
The commonest of all open spaces are public squares, piazzas, plazas, parks and courtyards. They are planned, designed and built to be shared. Entry may sometimes be restricted but are mostly open to public.
In Kathmandu, every piece of open space is considered a vacant lot waiting for occupation. Such a mindset may have something to do with the idea of nativity. Unlike an inhabitant of a town or city who is a citizen with duties and responsibilities, a native belongs to a place by ancestry and considers it his right to remodel or build his environment any which way he likes. The choice of gender is deliberate: Militant nativism is often an expression of masculinity.
Apart from conscientious professionals hawking values of modernity, the only other ‘citizens’ of this country are Madheshis. Both groups have had very little say in the way Kathmandu was allowed to remain a settlement of subjects and then deliberately left to degenerate into a dystopian urban sprawl.
Closed minds
Once upon a time, the lakebed was green and hillocks within the valley glistened like emeralds scattered on a brown floor. Settlers who had descended into the basin built tight towns atop arid ridges and left fertile plains for cultivation. They had little need for additional parks or greenbelts but created ample public squares and courtyards to make urban life possible. A mercantile civilization flourished as agriculture produced surpluses and advantage of location helped in the evolution of trading culture.
Arriving in the valley after multiple military campaigns, Gorkhalis left the medieval character of their new capital intact with the seat of religious-political power at the centre and a hierarchy of clusters built around consecrated palace complex as complete communities. King Prithvi admiringly called it his Takhat Killa—the impregnable fort. In tune with the ambitions of the period, Kathmandu became home of the largest parade ground in Asia—a large expanse that stretched from Rani Pokhari to Tripureshwar—where troops could be assembled within minutes after the bugle has been sounded from atop Bhimsen’s Folly, otherwise also known as Dharhara.
Ranas reduced the once mighty Gorkhali army into a mercenary force. Soldiers became orderlies in palaces of their masters whenever they were not being rented out to make money for the ruling clan. Ranas divided much of the flatlands in the valley among themselves as cousins in the family multiplied from legally wedded wives, forcibly taken concubines and liaisons of ailing patriarchs with female attendants and chambermaids of palaces and mansions dotting the valley. However, tightly-controlled population movement meant that there was enough agricultural land still intact at the time of the Shah Restoration in 1950s.
The first flush of immigrants in the 1950s gobbled up public commons and pastures by paying a pittance to their traditional caretakers. After the royal-military coup of 1960, the Guthi land of religious trusts became something to be given away to the family, friends and retainers of the king. In the 1970s, the newly empowered crony politicos and crafty administrators—the Panchayat nomenklatura—joined the game and began to legalize occupation of public land by the people in positions of authority in a massive way. This was the period when river plains were carved up into plots, wetlands were drained and reclaimed, and hillocks were dug up to reward loyalists of the absolutist system. Greenways along the Ring Road was planned as a desperate means of compensating for open spaces in the city that had been lost during the land grab in previous decades.
Along with massive tree-plantation campaign, land was acquired near Sitapaila to serve as an evacuation centre in case of catastrophic emergencies. The public land that had been levelled in Syuchatar to airlift supplies for Khampa rebels in the 1960s was to be protected as an empty space. The Boksi Chaur wilderness along the banks of Balkhu River was to be maintained. Near Ekantkuna, a public park was planned for the benefit of new settlements coming up in the Jawalakhel sprawl.
There were bigger plans for land acquired near Sat Dobato: It would be the Tundikhel of Patan. Further ahead, Tinkune junction would be the wide rotary with greenery. The land near the airport, which now houses Sanchar Gram, was meant for a tent village for pilgrims to Pashupati during Shivratri. Nearby, the Tilganga plains along Bagmati were to be used as bus park for religious tourists during festive occasions and left as playground for the rest of the year. The Sankha Park near Maharajgunj originally covered a larger area; it was later reduced to keep private land of powerful individuals outside the boundary of acquisition. Part of it was perhaps released after formal notice for acquisition had been made. None of these spaces retain their intended character.
Sitapaila Park houses an ordinance depot despite being so close to a heavily populated area. Syuchatar ground has unrecognisably shrunk. Bokshi Chaur has been taken over by religious zealots. Ekatna Kuna space is now an office park. The proposed Tundikhel of Satdobato houses a sports complex. Tinkune rotary is a dump yard. Sanchargram and Eye Hospital have taken up Tilganga land meant for devotees of Pashupati. The land once reserved for open space serves worthwhile causes. The city, however, lost its last attempt of creating lungs for clusters along the road that opened new areas for ‘development.’
Universally, defence and public sectors together help keep land unoccupied and green. In Nepal, the army thinks nothing of building a party palace in the middle of the town. The university rents out its property to private builders to erect shopping malls at busy junctions. And an organization of the Welfare Sector, like Nepal Telecom for example, invades the landscape with high-rises like any other enterprise of the Profit Sector.
Kathmandu Valley has several issues of urgency. Cleaning up Bagmati and its tributaries probably tops the agenda of making the valley liveable. Improvement in air quality would be impossible unless massive investments in mass transit are made in the near future. Open spaces are lungs that keep urban settlements functioning. The dust that is being raised over widening of streets would soon settle. Perhaps then it will be time to think of urban future of the valley all over again.
Lal contributes to The Week with his biweekly column Reflections. He is one of the widely read political analysts in Nepal.
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